Ballast-Check 2 performs well in California State Lands Commission validation

California State Lands Commission (CSLC) recently completed a validation exercise of three indicative sampling tools while developing their draft compliance assessment protocols. They evaluated the sampling tools with three different ballast water treatment systems – one UV system and two Electrochlorination systems. In all three assessments, the Ballast-Check 2 results were very similar to the microscopy and flow cytometry results (mean results over three replicates showed a maximum difference of 3 cells/mL, always matching the risk of exceedance level). Chris Brown, Senior Environmental Scientist with the Commission’s Marine Invasive Species Program, presented the results of their validation at the March 16, 2017 ICES/IMO Ballast Water Workgroup meeting. He detailed the planned compliance assessment protocols, if adopted, would be multi-tiered – 1) paperwork, calibration, & functionality; 2) indicative sampling; and 3) full scale testing. Indicative tools such as the Ballast-Check 2 would be employed when the second tier of indicative sampling is deemed necessary.